What a boom social networking had created. The impact of MySpace and Facebook was enormous and the ways of using them were countless. Not only did individuals use the services, but also businesses took great advantage of them.
And now, social networking is everywhere. Whether it's a photo service, video service, or a web bookmark, users are given the ability to communicate and discuss with others. At this point, a website that requires registration, but has no social networking feature look like black and white television (unless it's a banking or similar service of course).
To join the social networking business at current stage, a service would need more than just social networking features. Just sending messages and visiting profiles are not enough to keep users coming back. As a good example, I hardly ever visit Facebook anymore but go to MySpace, Flickr, and Plugat (besides work purposes) everyday. Because I produce music (occasionally) and love photography, I visit MySpace and Flickr to keep up with what other people similar to me are doing. My bookmarks and favorite web contents are collected at Plugat so I have to access it for my convenience. However, Facebook doesn't really provide a purpose for visit anymore. It was a great service to find friends that I had lost contact with, but now I've found most of them and communicate through Google Talk. So the only time I visit Facebook is when my friends tell me about events that they had gone through and I want to see the pictures. This happens once in about two weeks.
A purpose for users to visit is an essential factor in web service as well as the social networking feature. With either one absent, the service will have a hard time. For users, everything is getting easier and more enjoyable. But for developers...
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